This is an edited, rewritten transcript of Part Two of a two-part workshop
Shepherd Hoodwin conducted on BlogTalkRadio.com. The
first part was on July 12, 2009.

In it, Shepherd discusses several Michael Reading charts of both Michael
students and celebrities, most of which he channeled. The students were on the
air to discuss their charts with Shepherd. Be sure to download the accompanying, which contains forty-three charts and photographs of
the subjects. Not every chart was discussed in the workshop, and the charts that
were discussed live were not all done in the alphabetical order of the PDF.
However, they have been arranged in order for this transcript.

Most of the students are members of the Michael teachings Yahoo group. Go to
this link if you wish to join:

Lisa, you are a scholar/honorary warrior (both warrior essence twin and primary
casting), and realist. This is a strong, practical chart. Your warrior influence
makes you want to study more practical things, whereas pure scholar energy might
be more interested in all data and knowledge for its own sake. Would you tell us
a bit about how that works in your life?

LISA: I'm very practical, definitely not into just gathering data for data
purposes.

SHEPHERD: What kind of work do you do?

LISA: I'm a lawyer.

SHEPHERD: Warriors are the most persuasive of the roles ("persuasion" is the
positive pole), so warrior energy is useful for a lawyer. Law is also a great
area for scholars because there is so much to learn and study--one has to master
a great deal of information just to even be a lawyer. A warrior in that field
might get by more by the seat of her pants; being a scholar, you would likely be
thoroughly prepared--you'd know your cases well, the relevant facts, and so
forth.

LISA: Yes, that's correct.

SHEPHERD: Realist attitude is also a good overleaf for being a lawyer because,
like the pragmatist, it is practical and is just interested in how things are.
I'm an idealist; if I were a lawyer, I would probably be a storefront lawyer
trying to change the world, because it would drive me nuts not being able to
change things when I keep seeing how they could be improved. The realist is more
content to just see and deal with what is.

You have a goal of flow.

LISA: If this is flow, I'd hate to see what the rest of them are like!

SHEPHERD: Things have not seemed to flow easily in your outer life, but it is
interesting that in the Yarbro Michael books, they used the field of law as
being an example of the goal of flow, which is not what I'd normally think of.

The goal of flow tends to make for a life shape that meanders; it's a life that
has a little bit of this and a little bit of that, since it's the goal of not
having a goal. It's not moving inexorably to a particular point in time. Maybe a
reason it's common among lawyers is that every new case or job is a different
scenario.

The purpose of the goal of flow is to learn how to let things happen rather than
making them happen, as opposed to a goal of growth, for instance, which is more
about making things happen. In growth, you are called to take the bull by the
horns and master it, rising to your challenges by working hard. It has the
number six (cardinal inspiration axis) quality of being busy. In contrast, the
neutral, number four (assimilation axis) goal is like driving a car and learning
to balance braking with acceleration to get the best results: working, but not
too hard. It's the middle way, the neutral way of being. It also can be used to
slide to any of the other goals, so sometimes it's chosen for that purpose. You
might temporarily slide to dominance, temporarily to submission, and so forth.
The goal of flow might be chosen in order to have a rest life, but not
necessarily, and few people actually have easy lives on this challenging planet.
However, it is rare for someone with this goal to struggle for long for the
basics such as food and shelter if she is willing to let go to the flow of life,
even if there are plenty of internal struggles (which might reflect soul age,
life plan, karma, etc.)

You are third-level old. Third levels of any soul age tend to require a lot of
hard work (three is the warrior number, adding still more warrior influence) to
internalize the fundamental perspective of the age. The old cycle is about
attaining a philosophical overview of life, rather like what happens to an
individual when she goes away to college. So you are working hard internally to
detach from the physical plane, especially from the drama of the mature-soul
cycle. At third level, you're not as confident in that as you will be at fourth
level, which is when you will reach the equilibrium of the old cycle.

Old souls are not as interested in the outer world and tend to work hard in
their career only when it's in alignment with their spiritual goals, or out of
the sheer necessity to survive. Contrast that with young souls, who have a
strong ability to work hard for success for its own sake, so it's easier to do
something that you don't really like because there's a soul reward in its mere
accomplishment. However, we all have to pay the bills; sometimes, we end up
doing things that would not be our first choice, but that are necessary. Being a
third-level honorary warrior gives you an additional ability for hard work.

LISA: How do the primary, secondary, and tertiary casting work, and how
important are they?

SHEPHERD: You casting numbers are key factors in what make you who you are. The
first number is the most important, the second is middling, and the third is
minor. The first number, your position in your cadence, is how you manifest your
role's energy. You're in a group of seven scholars called your "cadence." You
number off one through seven; you're in the third position, so out of those
seven scholars, you're the one who's the most warrior-like. You're the scholar
of this intimate soul group who will roll up your sleeves and get the job done.
You're the one who would be best, out those seven, at, say, starting a
business--number three casting is very good for business and making things
happen in general. The warrior domain also includes law enforcement and the
military, so it fits with your law career. The positive pole is "enterprise";
the negative is "versatility." Versatility isn't a destructive thing, but it
means in this context that you have capabilities that you may not be using, that
you don't actually pull together to make things happen.

I recently asked Michael why so many people I knew with warrior casting didn't
necessarily have the coercive quality of the warrior. They said that coercion is
a function of warrior energy being so concentrated, so focused toward the single
goal that the warrior is working on in that moment--it's like a laser beam, and
can be coercive in the negative pole. On the other hand, number three casting is
more about the basic warrior ability to simply make things happen in the outer
world, so you have that if you want it: it's about being productive, effectively
ploughing through your "to do" list.

The second number is your cadence's position in your greater cadence, which is
simply seven cadences. Your cadence is in the second position in its greater
cadence, so all seven of you have a pervasive artisan quality, since two is the
artisan position. This influence is not as strong as your scholar or warrior
energies, but it's the third most influential out of the seven. Its influence on
you is a little exaggerated in terms of what friends and family notice about
you, because the cadence's position in your greater cadence is what stands out
close up. We're each like a multi-faceted gem, so different things stand out
about us from different distances and angles. For example, you might look
different to your co-workers than you do to your family. People who are close to
you will notice your artisan traits more than those who know you less well. They
might include being good at crafts or with your hands in general, having an
aesthetic sensibility, or loving to cook. This is a part of you that may not be
obvious to people at a farther distance, but can be seen by people who know you
well. Can you validate that?

LISA: Yes, I think that's true. I paint and do photography. Most people wouldn't
know it, though, unless they knew me well.

SHEPHERD: Your artisan influence is almost doubled because your greater cadence,
your group of forty-nine, is also second in its string of greater cadences of
scholars. Tertiary casting is a weaker influence, but it reinforces your
secondary casting, so artisan casting is almost as strong for you as warrior,
but it isn't obvious because you also have a warrior essence twin, and that
trumps everything. With warrior bleedthrough, the warrior influence stands out.
Scholar is what you *are*, but it has a neutral quality that takes on other
colorings easily, whereas warrior energy has a pronounced stamp. Someone who
doesn't know you well but knows the teachings might guess you to be a warrior,
because a scholar doesn't have a strong flavor of its own.

Part of your casting is also your entity's position in your cadre (seven
entities, typically about 7000 souls); you're in a number six-position entity.
That is a quality that stands out about you to strangers, so from a distance,
the priest casting of your whole entity gives you a slight inspirational
air--for example, in the courtroom. Does that make sense?

LISA: Yes, it does.

If family and friends are in a different cadre--different spiritual
families--does that mean that, ultimately, I won't be with them?

SHEPHERD: No. Michael is fond of saying that "All is choice."

Almost every soul will arrange to have at least a handful of people in their
entity somewhere in their life: childhood friends, family members, co-workers,
etc. Of course, if you don't have charts on all of them, you may not know that
they're in your entity; they just feel familiar and comfortable. Usually, but
not always, you get along famously with people in your entity. Sometimes there
are conflicts because we all have personalities, blind spots, negativity, and so
forth, but generally it's comfortable.

However, one can have close, enduring bonds with souls not in one's entity,
cadre, or even cadre group (twelve cadres). Some souls actually make a specialty
of hanging out with people who are not in their cadre because they find it
interesting to do so. They are the people who help link the whole together, like
ambassadors. You're in what through me Michael calls cadre 4/entity 6, or 4/6.
You could, for example, be someone who continually links with people in cadre 7,
a thread that helps hold the whole cadre group together.

This could have gotten started in a past life when you became good friends with
some people in another cadre, even one numerically far away from your own. You
liked hanging out with them, found it comfortable, and got used to it. The
initial relationships might have formed due to soul agreements, or you may have
made soul agreements after discovering the relationships and deciding to further
them.

Only about half of our experience on the physical plane is planned and ordered.
The surprises help keep it interesting and expansive. For example, when people
get married and make families, they do so for a variety of reasons. These days,
people often marry just because they're young, horny, and find their partner
attractive, or even just because someone asks them--there are not necessarily
soul agreements involved.

My parents were an example: they had no soul agreement to be together, but there
was something compelling there. It turned out that they had extreme and
perfectly opposite male/ female energy ratios. My mother and I were in the same
entity, but my father and others in my family are in different cadres, and I
have little soul connection with them.

In this universe, we're learning about free will. There's some design,
structure, and intention to it, but also some chaos and accident; we grow
through the interplay of those opposites.

CAROLINE
(Chart 25)

There's always a caveat when discussing the charts of well-known people that it
can be tricky to get the information, and sometimes various channels don't agree
on it. I'm just going to share with you what I've gotten or the conclusions I've
come to. It's your job to self-validate, to decide for yourself what you think
about them, but we can use these charts, at least, as teaching tools.

Caroline Kennedy's chart is interesting because she was born to two of the most
famous and glamorous people of the twentieth century, John F. and Jacqueline
Kennedy, yet she has a decidedly ordinal chart. Throughout most of her life,
she's been off the radar, being highly private, although she has worked quite
hard, for example, on behalf of New York City public schools and other public
causes. Suddenly, when the New York Senate seat belonging to Hillary Clinton
became available, she was considered for it and she was willing to step up for
that, but she was not chosen and then mostly disappeared from sight again.

I channeled her as a server soul. Server is the most ordinal of the seven roles.
I also channeled that she has no essence twin, so she has pure server energy,
with priest and artisan casting. Priest casting is ordinal, too, even though the
role of priest is cardinal. Her goal of flow, observation mode, and chief
obstacle of stubbornness are neutral (neither ordinal nor cardinal). Idealist
attitude and her other casting numbers are cardinal. So, on the whole, she is
ordinal, since role and primary casting are the most important chart elements.

She does have high male energy, so she's probably been male in more lifetimes;
male energy is more career-oriented. Also, according to my channeling, she's at
sixth-level young, so if she was ever going to be in the public eye, this would
be a good time to do it, at almost the height of the young-soul cycle, because
that age has the drive to make an impact on the outer world.

Let's discuss ordinality and cardinality: You can look at a chart, add and
subtract the cardinality or ordinality of each item, and come up with an idea of
whether a person is predominantly ordinal, cardinal, or neutral. First of all,
what do these terms mean? Ordinal is specific, like a zoom lens that hones in on
the details of things. Cardinal is the opposite, like the wide-angle lens
focusing on the big picture, general and overarching.

It's not either/or: they progress on a spectrum from one to seven, most ordinal
to most cardinal. Each of the roles and overleaves is associated with one of
those numbers. Look at the fourth line of the chart, where it says, "Position
resonates with Server (1), Priest (6), Artisan (2),….The numbers after the role
tell you what position from one to seven each of the roles has. It's the same
with each of the overleaves. Server is in the far left column; it says that
server is in the (1) position, so server is the most ordinal role. Each of the
overleaves in that column is also the most ordinal. Anything in the seven
column, which is king (second from the right), is the most cardinal. So if
you're a server, your focus in life is like the zoom lens: you're most
interested in the details of life, the concrete, the nitty-gritty. That
manifests in the way that servers like to take care of others in specific ways.
We find servers running governments, caring for others as nurses in hospitals,
and so forth.

To summarize, the roles go from most ordinal to most cardinal in this order:

Again, each overleaf in the same column as the roles has the same ordinality/cardinality,
as well as sharing the overarching traits of the common number (more on this
later). So, for example, the most ordinal goal is "reevaluation," on the same
side of the same (inspiration) axis as server. A lifetime with a goal of
reevaluation is one of contraction and reflection, a small life focused on
simple things.

The second most ordinal role is artisan--it's number two. Artisans work with the
specifics of form, creating and designing things. The third most ordinal is
warrior; warriors work with making things happen--they roll up their sleeves and
do it themselves, not delegating to others the way a king is more likely to do.

Fourth is scholar. Four is in the middle of the seven; it's equidistant from
both ends (four in), so it's neither ordinal nor cardinal, but neutral. What is
neutral can go either way. Scholars can be ordinal in some lifetimes, cardinal
in others, but they often float in the middle. Scholar energy itself doesn't
have a preference for ordinality or cardinality, but other things on a scholar's
chart may tilt toward ordinal or cardinal. This is true for everyone, actually,
but more obvious for scholars, since they don't already have an intrinsic tilt.

Five is sage; sages are cardinal, although not as cardinal as priests and kings.
Sages like to communicate to large numbers of people or communicate large,
general things--ideas and perceptions, which are expressions of thought forms,
as opposed to artisans, who express themselves by fixing the plumbing, for
example. So sages' expressions are more abstract, less concrete.

Warriors and sages are not extremely ordinal or cardinal, respectively. One step
further in cardinality is priest; priests like to take care of people, but in a
spiritual, big-picture or long-term way. King is the most cardinal of all the
roles; kings organize the action of wholes.

Where you sit on the spectrum from ordinality to cardinality, in both your soul
type and overall chart, tells a lot about the types of things to which you're
attracted. Generally, the more cardinal you are, the more people you know and
interact with, but the less concentrated those interactions are. So if you're a
server or an artisan, you may have just a few friends but be very close to them,
whereas if you're a priest, you might minister to thousands of people, yet not
be so close to most of them; you have a strong but more generalized kind of
impact on the world.

There's also the character of the role and overleaves themselves. Sages, for
example, are the most sociable of the roles. I'm a sage, and some people have
remarked that I have more friends than anyone else they know, even though I'm
not extremely cardinal overall. High cardinality is really more about being
potently influential rather than just being friendly, which any role can be. To
make an analogy, think of a soul as being like a tire, and the more cardinal,
the higher the air pressure. So kings feel like they have a lot more energy
(air) pumped into their souls than laid-back servers do, which makes them
compelling (not necessarily comfortable).

Let's return to Kennedy, who has the most ordinal of the roles with ordinal
primary casting: she's number six within her cadence, which is the priest
position. Since priests are cardinal, you might think that this is a cardinal
influence; however, priest casting is ordinal. Why?

When you see numbers between one and seven (as opposed to traits with names) on
the Michael chart, ordinality/cardinality is reversed. The "Michael Math"
chapter of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's book, "More Messages from Michael," explains
that numbers (which are on the third and fourth lines of my charts) concern your
numeric position within larger groups; we call that your "casting." It's sort of
like your address in the universe.

If you look at the numbers one through seven on a page (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7),
and divide them graphically in half, there would be a line in the middle of the
four. The first three are cardinal because they lead the way--they come first,
and what comes first is more influential. What comes later is responsive or
reactive to what has been set by what comes first. This is one of the
fascinating, ingenious ways that the system shows us how everything in the
universe balances out. So, if you, as an eternal spark of the Tao, want to
experience the flavor of the priest, you can do so in a cardinal way by being a
priest (or having a priest essence twin--the energy from your twin soul bleeds
through, in varying amounts). Or you can experience it in an ordinal way by
having priest casting. The latter has the same flavor, but a person with priest
casting likes to do priest things in an ordinal way. Priests heal and nurture
others, helping them see the bigger picture of their lives, but a person with
priest casting does that more, say, in one-on-one counseling rather than in
front of a congregation.

So, to summarize: the number six resonates with the role of priest. Priest is
the second most cardinal of the seven roles. (You could also say that it's the
sixth most ordinal, if you count from the other direction.) However, priest
*casting* is the second most ordinal casting.

Kennedy has a double influence of inspiration through her soul type and casting,
and both are ordinal, but they run the gamut from server things, which focus on
physical needs, through priest things, which take care of individuals' spiritual
needs.

DAVE GREGG: One thing I've always admired about Kennedy is her
enthusiastic support for the arts, both in the schools and on the professional
level. I used to think she was a scholar until I saw the chart that you did. Now it makes
sense, because she has a self-effacing, easy-going style. However, she's still
very sharp. And even with her tremendous wealth, the woman takes the subway.

SHEPHERD: I had thought that she's a scholar at first, too. I hadn't really
studied her or been that exposed to her, but there is a no-nonsense quality
about her that I associate with the solid roles (scholar, warrior, and king);
however, I might have been picking up on her high male energy. One generally
associates the server and artisan roles with the feminine stereotypes. Kennedy
doesn't seem much like her mother, Jacqueline Kennedy (channeled by Yarbro as a
young sage), who was very feminine in her self-presentation, perhaps partly due
to her imprinting. When you study Kennedy's picture, though, you don't see
scholar neutrality in her eyes; you see server-ish doe-like warmth, whereas in
scholar photos, there's a distinct neutrality. Compare her photo to that of
Eckhart Tolle (Chart 39 in the accompanying PDF), who's a scholar with a scholar
essence twin--there's an unmistakable difference in their eyes.

JANET
(Chart 26)

Fourth-level mature is the center of the mature cycle. Typically, people at
fourth-mature are comfortable with relationships and emotions. Life can be a
soap opera, but it's generally a rather fun stage for the soul.

You have very high male energy at eighty percent. Priests are equally
comfortable as male or female. They like being fluid as a female, and like being
powerful as a male. However, you've probably been male much more often. High
male energy can manifest as being a workaholic.

JANET: That fits.

SHEPHERD: You attract partners who are more mellow. The opposite of 80/20 is
20/80.

In my parents' marriage, they were both extreme, and perfect opposites. My
mother had twenty-three percent male energy and seventy-seven percent female. My
father had 77/23. That is the only thing I can see on their charts that would
have brought them together, but it was like a magnet. When you're that extreme,
opposites really do attract.

Your chart is a study in strong contrasts--you have other extremes occurring. On
the more physical side, you have that high male energy, aggression mode, and
triple warrior casting: primary, tertiary, and your entity, which is third in
its cadre. On the more spiritual side, you're a priest with secondary priest
casting, emotionally centered, and in the height of the mature cycle, which
involves inner exploration. So compassion, healing, and emotion on one hand, and
guts and aggression on the other. This could show up in one of two ways for you:
You could swing from one extreme to the other, or you could integrate them and
be somewhere in the middle, using the best of all of those traits.

JANET: That's funny you say that. I've often described myself to my therapist as
having a switch that I turn; I'm in these two different places, not unlike what
you're describing.

SHEPHERD: Aggression mode going from dynamism to belligerence could be part of
the switch.

As a soul, you chose these opposites, so you can assume that the ultimate goal
of this is to have the best of both worlds. One example is integrating high male
energy into a female body, which is always a challenge, just as the reverse is.
You're probably not used to being female, but you seem to have a soul mission of
using these extremes to find the middle.

JANET: I was most surprised by the emotional center. On Myers-Briggs and other
personality tests, I come out very high on the thinking, analytical, logic,
intellectual side of things.

SHEPHERD: The center has a narrow definition pertaining to how we react first to
incoming stimuli: from our body, emotions, or intellect. There are people who
are highly intellectual in general but are not intellectually centered, for
instance. Your center is the front door of your personality, so when something
knocks, that's what opens first. An intellectually centered person greets every
new experience with analysis. I'm intellectually centered; if something new is
thrown at me that I have to react to, you can almost see the wheels of my brain
turning first. Because I'm in the emotional part, my emotions then quickly take
on the character of my thoughts. So it's really true for me that if I think more
positive thoughts, I will feel better emotionally. That's how it works for me,
but not for everyone.

For you, emotions come first, so you engage with the world through feeling. You
feel things, and then your thoughts take their form from what you've felt. This
centering aids being perceptive about other people.

The photographs in the PDF that show your eyes have a wateriness on the surface
that almost every emotionally centered person has, so that's a good way to
validate it. You may intellectualize quickly on the heels of your emotion, but
emotions come first for you in your reactions.

RUSH
LIMBAUGH(Chart 27)

I got Rush Limbaugh as a sage/honorary warrior because his two most important
secondary traits are both warrior. One is his essence twin, a discarnate
warrior. Discarnate means a soul who is not currently physical. When that's the
case with your essence twin, you get more bleedthrough than when it's somebody
who is busy in his/her own physical body, so you have substantial secondary
traits of the warrior, in this case, rubbing off on you. Limbaugh also has
warrior casting, which means that in his group of seven sages, he's in the
three/warrior position, which is cardinal. Limbaugh is seventh-level young; that
means that he is at the height, or epitome, of the young soul experience.

There is a positive and negative side to everything on the Michael chart. There
is nothing on the chart that, of itself, is positive or negative; there's no
such thing as a good or bad chart. Each is like a color scheme: If you choose
green and white for your bedroom, that's not better or worse than choosing blue
and yellow--they're just different qualities. This is true of soul age: Every
soul age has positive and negative manifestations. It's not better or worse to
be older or younger, even though people may have value judgments about that.

What is great about the young soul cycle is the same thing that's great about
being a young person physically: the vitality of it. It has get-up-and-go, the
drive and the desire to get out there and make things happen in the outer world.
This is not true of every young soul, just as it's not true of every young
person, because we're all unique individuals and there can be mitigating
factors. However, when you see someone who has put a lot of energy into making
things happen in the outer world and not so much into developing his inner
world--a one-pointed focus on success--that person may be either in the
young-soul stage or manifesting that. The inner focus of the mature soul will
come next.

Manifesting is what you're experiencing in your life at the moment, not
necessarily the ultimate destination for your lifetime. You might, for example,
be reviewing a younger stage.

Limbaugh is stereotypical of the young cycle in that he has become extremely
successful in his field. I think he makes more money than anybody else in radio.
Someone can be very successful and make a lot of money, and be a different soul
age, but he seems to clearly relish spending his money and living
ostentatiously. He's single and doesn't have family living with him, yet has a
huge mansion. It's very ornate in an old-fashioned way, where the money spent is
obvious everywhere. He also has his own plane. He seems to revel in his success.

However, I channeled that he is manifesting at sixth-level baby. That means that
what he's doing in his immediate life at the moment looks, maybe not in all
ways, but in the majority or average of ways, like sixth-level baby. The baby
soul cycle is about learning about the structure of society, what the rules are
and how to fit in. It's community oriented, whereas the young-soul cycle is more
individual oriented. Sixth level is about tying up loose ends with others around
the theme of the cycle. The negative side of the baby cycle is an excess of
rigidity: "If you step outside the rules of society, we will shun you." The
positive side of that includes just serving your community in a more external,
obvious sort of way (as opposed to the mature-soul cycle, in which community
work is more about the subtleties of relationships).

Limbaugh's most abrading chart quality is being a sage with a goal of
discrimination. The goal is what motivates you in your lifetime, what pulls you
through the life; it sets up the kind of experiences you will have.
Discrimination is a goal that is not chosen very often, but is needed once in a
while; it is the opposite of the goal of acceptance. About thirty percent of the
world, at any given time, has a goal of acceptance, whereas only a few percent
have a goal of discrimination.

Acceptance is about learning how to say yes. However, if you take that too far,
if you don't learn about "no," then your "yes" becomes meaningless. Therefore,
occasionally, in some of our lifetimes, we need to focus on "no." This goal was
originally called, in the Yarbro books, "rejection," which is the opposite of
acceptance. People with a goal of discrimination/rejection usually have little
trouble saying no or excluding things from their life.

If you look at the chart, you'll see that acceptance is the natural goal for
sage because it's on the same column. So a sage in acceptance has an extreme
quality of acceptance; it's almost painful to say no or to exclude anything from
his life. However, even sages have to sometimes practice saying no, so that what
they're saying yes to is what they really want to say yes to; we all have to be
able to separate the wheat from the chaff. The goal of discrimination is about
learning how to discern, learning what we do and don't want in our lives. In the
negative pole, prejudice, we reject a lot of things without really going through
the process of discriminating, just out of prejudged opinions. That can be
painful both for the person holding the overleaf and for those around him, so
it's a difficult overleaf: it can be abrasive, and it's especially agonizing for
sages. Sages in discrimination may have a self-karma (internal energy
imbalance), because sages naturally want others to love and accept them: if
their audience isn't listening to them and liking them reasonably well, they
cannot do their job, which is to communicate with people.

Limbaugh obviously has a very dedicated audience, which must gratify his sage
nature, but he's not trying to please everyone--he doesn't seem to care whom he
pisses off; he even seems to get pleasure out of rejecting. In the negative
pole, he does it in a prejudiced or biased way. He also has a chief obstacle
(chief feature) of arrogance. Arrogance is defined as a fear of being judged;
one way people cope with that is to make themselves out to be better than
others, putting up a wall, an armor, of superiority, around themselves. When our
chief obstacle is operating in our lives, it tends to put us in the negative
poles (sides) of our other traits. The negative pole of sage is "oration," and
he has been accused of being a blowhard, which is oration. Being a prejudiced
blowhard could be triggered by his fear of being judged by others and therefore
being self-protective.

Also, Limbaugh has high male energy, which suggests that he has been male in
more lifetimes than not, giving him both more career orientation and a tendency
to be better at talking than listening (the feminine receives; the masculine
gives), which is already a negative-pole sage trait even without higher male
energy.

DAVE: Would you say he's a sage in extreme arrogance, or is that just a lot of
the discrimination coming through?

SHEPHERD: It's probably extreme, since he virtually never shows any
vulnerability. When he was caught red-handed having an addiction to a
prescription drug, OxyContin, and having broken the law, having done a lot of
the things he had accused and condemned others for doing, he very temporarily
showed some vulnerability (arrogance is also defined as a fear of
vulnerability). However, he seems to have gone right back into his old
song-and-dance, and doesn't show much vulnerability anymore. You don't often
hear him sincerely saying, "Well I could be wrong about this." He's usually
strongly self-righteousness, so I think there is probably an extreme chief
obstacle here. The people who listen to him tend to get off on his rage; they
self-select by sharing a lot of his views, so there isn't much chance that he'll
be challenged on what he believes in any real, intimate way.

Stereotypical arrogance manifests as a sense of superiority. He has expressed
that he considers himself to be far more intelligent than Bill O'Reilly, who
shares his extreme-conservative DNA. That's probably the case--Limbaugh is
clearly quite intelligent--but his lack of humility about it suggests arrogance.

DAVE: Especially when he uses his favorite saying that his talent is on loan
from God.

SHEPHERD: That could definitely be a sage in arrogance. At least he doesn't say
that it's permanently gifted from God. :)

DAVE: He can definitely be a little entertaining though, if you can get past the
rhetoric.

SHEPHERD: He's a master of the communication medium, which you would expect from
a seventh-level young sage. Seven is the king/mastery level. In the negative
pole, sages may enjoy shocking others and getting a strong reaction from them,
and he is probably aware that doing so boosts his ratings. That may exaggerate
the impression of negativity left by his arrogance and the negative pole of
discrimination. He is probably a more pleasant person when he isn't "on." "Shock
jock" Howard Stern is another example of that; they many not entirely mean what
they say.

DAVE: You could almost see the radio world as his conquered territory, which
would reflect his honorary warrior energy.

SHEPHERD: Especially interesting about him is that he's virtually deaf. How is
that for self-karma for a sage? Seventh levels are about self-karma. At sixth
level, you tend to work off karma with others; at seventh level, you're
struggling within yourself. To be a sage who loves the spotlight and has a huge
platform, but is virtually deaf--he's only able to do his show with the help of
modern technology--is an extraordinary challenge. Warrior energy is about
overcoming challenges.

DAVE: And he had the wealth to afford cochlear implants.

TZIPORAH
(called in with a question):
You channeled me as a seventh-level young
priest/honorary scholar. I am living at the poverty line and am so not out there
in the world.

SHEPHERD: At the end of seventh-level young, you switch gears and start gearing
up toward first mature. Transitions of soul age are imperceptible from close up,
but you're laying the groundwork for a whole new cycle.

Also, one cannot generalize too much about any trait on the Michael Reading
chart. Yes, there's Limbaugh at seventh young who is making a ton of money and
is the master of his domain. However, there are over two billion young souls.
Obviously, very few of them are famous, rolling in dough, and mastering their
field. Still, in the young cycle, there's a lot of vitality, a drive to go out
and do things. As to whether that manifest for you personally as becoming a
renowned singer or whatever, there's a bit of the luck involved in that. You're
in New York City, which is full of gifted, hard-working artists of all kinds who
don't make it to the top because they don't get the big break--they're not in
the right place at the right time. It's very hard, with so much competition and
relatively few slots, to become successful in the arts. It's easier, relatively
speaking, to become successful in the business world, but that's still not easy.
So I think we need to get away from stereotypical thinking, such as "All young
souls are materialistic, rich, and famous." The point is that young souls tend
to have more drive to succeed in the world than they do at other soul ages.

Unfortunately, in most of the Michael books, the languaging about soul ages has
been a little biased, highlighting the negative pole excesses and imbalances of
the soul ages. They tend to make it sound like you're not spiritual if you're
young, for instance. On the other hand, there's a noted passage in Yarbro about
old kings being hobos, which is obviously an extreme example of old souls who
have entirely lost their drive, for whatever reasons. With almost seven billion
people in the world, it is common sense that most people have lives that are
somewhere in the middle, no matter what their soul age is.

TZIPORAH MIRIAM: When I was in high school, I was a co-valedictorian. I got into
an Ivy League college and graduated with highest honors. So maybe I hit my
seventh-level stride at twenty, and have been moving toward the more mature
direction since then.

SHEPHERD: That sounds right. On a soul level, you may have checked that off your
list, so to speak. I don't mean to imply that an older soul couldn't also
accomplish those things, but obviously, you had to work very hard to become
co-valedictorian and to get through an Ivy League school. Having the energy to
do that is certainly assisted by being young.

NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
(Chart 28)

The person who asked for Niccolo Machiavelli's chart had also asked for a chart
of Karl Rove because she wondered if they are the same soul. According to my
channeling, they are not.

I got Machiavelli as a king with a discarnate artisan essence twin. The
combination of king and artisan energies is probably the most difficult two out
of the seven to put together in a single chart or in a relationship because
they're not really opposites. You can figure out how to balance opposites, but
these two energies are just so different from each other that they're hard to
harmonize. However, any two energies can be harmonized; it's sort of like making
the colors orange and green work together in a room--you can do it, but it's a
challenge. The king is all about establishing order, seeing how everything fits
together and organizing the whole. The artisan, being creative, is more about
chaos, going into the realm of all possibilities and selecting new ones we don't
have now. So those roles pull in different directions. Artisans are spontaneous;
kings (along with scholars and warriors, the other solid roles) have one input,
so they like more order and predictability--they're naturally more conservative.

I don't know what Machiavelli was like in his day-to-day life to people who knew
him, but he is thought of as the archetype of political cunning, somebody who
was adept at manipulating to get what he wanted. Kings are generally good at
that sort of thing--kings and warriors are the most ruthless of the roles in the
negative pole: the negative pole of king is tyranny and the negative pole of
warrior is coercion. So in the negative pole, they can be harsh to get what they
want, think is right, or whatever. They are also good at strategy and
calculation. If you add artisan energy to this, a person might have the ability
to approach a new situation and figure out how to creatively and unpredictably
turn it to his advantage. However, I got Machiavelli's casting as warrior and
king, so he was much stronger on the action axis than expression, plus he had
dominance, which is the king goal. Also, he had arrogance and was seventh-level
young, like Rush Limbaugh.

BARACK OBAMA (Chart
30)

As with many well-known people, there have been a number of different channels
who have gotten overleaves for Barack Obama. I've seen around ten different
versions of his, but I've rarely seen so much agreement among the different
channels.

My article "Channeling Michael Information More Than Once" is here:

http://www.michaelteachings.com/channeling-more-than-once.html

It's about why it's problematic, and different channels tend to get different
information. However, with Obama, there are a lot of the same overleaves from
many different channels. Out of the ten, nine got that he is a priest (the other
got king--I got him as having king casting). I don't suggest that we start
trying to determine charts by consensus, because sometimes, as in every field,
the majority is wrong; it's good to be intelligent when looking at charts rather
than just voting, but, clearly, Obama is a priest. For one thing, he's a very
inspirational speaker; he sounds a little bit like a preacher.

I got that he does not have an essence twin. Although some channels did get an
essence twin for him, the case I can make for him not having an essence twin is
that he is so obviously a priest--hardly anyone is wondering whether he a priest
or, say, a sage. So there's pure priest energy, which would either come from him
having no essence twin or him having a priest essence twin. (If he had an
essence twin of another role, but incarnate, there would be lesser bleedthrough,
but it would still not be as clear-cut as he seems to be.)

I can't make comparisons about what I channeled on his casting because I haven't
heard of any other channels getting casting information for him. I got king and
then, secondarily, sage, with tertiary (minor) artisan casting. King casting
means that he seeks mastery and excellence in his inspiration. Casting doesn't
have the energy of the role directly, but it does have the actions (direction
and flavor) of it. Obama doesn't come off with stereotypical king energy (we
don't see tyranny), but we do see him being very careful and exacting in his
choice of words, which could be a perfectionist king flavor. He doesn't let
himself go with priestly inspiration, as a priest-cast priest might--he's more
contained. So I think it's possible, at least, to make a case for king casting.
I also channeled him as being in a king-position entity (some channels did get
other entities for him). Both king casting and entity would leave others both
near and far with a king-flavored impression of him. Incidentally, I got him as
being in the same entity as Al Gore, which is intriguing.

His secondary casting of sage shows up in his very good sense of humor. Most
people who become well known in politics start to become cautious about cracking
jokes because it often backfires, but earlier in his campaign on some talk
shows, he was quite funny.

I got him as being on the truth side of his entity (the other choices are love
and beauty, or energy). That makes a soul more oriented in truth. The positive
pole of priest is compassion, caring for others, so priests have an obvious
natural affinity for the love force, but being on the truth side, there's a
personal prioritizing of what is true. He is certainly insightful and
thoughtful. His autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," reveals a search for
truth and not just for an exalted feeling of inspiration (love).

He has higher male energy. We're going to be talking about Michelle's chart
next; she's even higher in male energy. So there's a strong career orientation
in both of them.

He's had thirteen previous grand cycles. Every grand cycle adds a layer of
complexity, and he's fairly complex. The highest of anyone we know of on Earth
is nineteen. The average person in the United States has had about five.

The goal of growth has more often come up among channels, but dominance has come
up a couple of times. You could make a good case both ways, so I will explore
that here:

Growth is the priest goal, so every priest has something of the quality of
growth in him; therefore, it's easy to see it in a priest. People who have the
actual goal of growth are characterized by being exceptionally busy; they tend
to fill their time and their lives, with many irons in the fire, and enjoy that
unless they overdo it, which puts them in the negative pole, "confusion." In
growth, one seeks new challenges; in responding to new stimuli, one grows and
learns things.

People with a goal of growth tend to be more self (inner)-involved, whereas
dominance tends to make one more involved with the outer world. It would be too
pat to see dominance as the goal for every leader, but as introspective as Obama
can be (which especially showed up in his autobiography), he seems to spend far
more time involved with others. In its positive pole, "leadership," dominance is
about facilitating win-win solutions among others.

Another confounding factor in trying to validate Obama's goal is that I also got
him as sixth-level mature (growth is the number six goal). The sixth level of a
soul age also tends to be a quite full and busy time, rushing around trying to
handle a lot of different things, so that can look a bit like growth. In fact,
busyness might be thought of as a characteristic of the entire priest/number six
axis, since it's cardinal (expanded) and inspirational (internal)--it's about
expanding the inner world.

Dominance has a negative pole of dictatorship. I've not heard reports about him
being a dictator. However, I have also not heard of him going into substantial
confusion or overwhelm (growth), either, although some anecdotes suggest that
there might have been some of that going on during his campaign, and being an
internal experience, that might be hard for others to read unless he talked
about it.

I have known a couple of people validated as being in dominance who also did not
exhibit overt dictatorship, although it might have shown up more subtly to
people close to them. (Obama spoke of butting heads with Michelle early in their
marriage.) I had a scholar friend in dominance who had had an overbearing
father, and he hated authority figures. He despised the idea that he might be
one himself when his chart first came back with him being in dominance. However,
you could see in his life that he was constantly being put in that position
despite himself. If there was a committee, he was always asked to be in charge
of it; he constantly ending up being the leader. He was basically a
mild-mannered scholar, and the rest of his overleaves were gentle, too. His wife
and co-workers probably saw some dictatorship, but, to me, it didn't show up
strongly or obviously.

So, for me, the jury is out on Obama's goal, but I lean toward dominance. Being
a sixth-mature priest in growth might pull him inward too much for him to do
what he is doing.

Attitude has come up as either idealist or pragmatist. As with his goal, I can
see both, but my vote is for idealist. The argument that's being made for him
being a pragmatist is that he's a practical person--he's flexible about policy,
taking into account what he's able to pass through Congress. He says, "Okay,
let's just figure out something that works here." However, one suspects that
many politicians have been shocked early on by how hard it is to get things done
and have learned the hard way to be at least somewhat pragmatic. Also, Obama has
a conciliatory personality, which may, in part, relate to him being a priest.
Some priests are firebrands, but part of his priest "higher ideal" is trying to
find common ground with those who identify as conservatives. This could also
relate to the positive pole of dominance, forging win-win solutions. (Being
averse to conflict can be a characteristic of the goal of acceptance, negative
pole "ingratiation," but that has not been suggested by any channels I know of
as being his goal.)

The pragmatists I have known and validated, in the sense of the overleaf, also
had a bland quality about them. It's the neutral attitude, and it has a
no-nonsense, grounded approach, not just practicality, but it has no set
preference for how to look at the world. The idealist attitude says, "The world
can be changed and I'm going to do my darndest to change it." Of course, change
was the entire theme of his campaign. One could argue that it was just a
political slogan, since a lot of politicians talk about change in a general way,
but I think it was more than that for him. The idealist compares the world he
sees now to his vision of how it should be, and with great optimism, positivity,
and the ability to bounce back, he gets in there and tries to do that. His
speeches and writings reflect idealism to me. Idealists smile more, too, as a
rule, than pragmatists, and Obama smiles a lot.

The belief that idealists are not practical doesn't pan out in my experience. I
am an idealist, which is on the same axis as my role, sage, so it's a very
strong overleaf for me--the two traits reinforce each other. Sages are already
naturally optimistic and verbal about how things could be made better; it's our
nature. However, I also have, in some ways, a practical nature. I'm efficient
and good at organizing things. I'm interested in matters of policy and how they
can be made to work better. When I was younger, I was more in the negative pole
of "abstraction"--I was naïve about a lot of things. That's something that
idealists in the negative pole share with the negative pole of spiritualist: a
tendency to be out of touch with how things really are. However, the positive
pole of idealist, "coalescence," pulls things together and makes them work, so
there is an inherent practicality in the positive pole. Idealist is more
inherently practical than spiritualist; spiritualists can have rose-colored
glasses and their heads up in the clouds.

The majority of channels, including me, have gotten observation mode for Obama.
Fifty percent of humanity is in observation, although some of us slide fairly
often to other modes. Some people find Obama aloof, and the neutral mode can
yield that impression, especially along with self-protective arrogance and dry
intellectual centering. In observation mode, one neutrally observes, as opposed
to passion mode, for example, which jumps into life with both feet.

One channel got caution mode for him; you could make the case for that from how
he speaks--there's a lot of "um's" and pauses. He's trying to think and be
careful about his word choices. Any of the neutral overleaves (those in the far
right hand column) can slide to any of the other overleaves in that row, so his
observation could easily slide to caution, and probably does from time to time.
However, I think his basic default is more neutral. His caution about what he
says may just come from the knowledge that he's going to be judged for every
word (igniting self-conscious arrogance, which is the next item we'll discuss),
and it's better to avoid misunderstandings before they start. Another factor,
again, may be his king-casting perfectionism, seeking excellence in his word
choices.

To me, Obama is clearly intellectually centered. I got that he's in the moving
part, and there's a lot of agreement on that. A couple channels got him in the
emotional center, which has a natural affinity for the inspiration-axis roles.
However, when I want to validate emotional centering, I look for a watery
quality in the eyes, whereas intellectual centering has a thoughtful quality,
which I see in him.

Arrogance has come up for Obama's chief obstacle with most of the channelings,
with one vote for impatience and another vote for stubbornness. I'm going with
arrogance, but I think he's worked on it and it's mild at this point. I listened
to the audiobook of "Dreams from My Father"; you can tell that he works hard on
himself, trying to be conscious and self-aware. He knows that he has a tendency
toward arrogance, and works against it, which a mark of self-awareness.

During the campaign, he was at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. A tradition is
that you write down a prayer on a little piece of paper, roll it up, and stick
it in a crack in the wall. This is a sacred act, and it's considered to be a
serious breach to look at what someone wrote. However, of course, after he put
his prayer in the wall, someone took it out and publicized it. Part of his
prayer said, "…help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do
what is right and just. Make me an instrument of your will." The latter part
sounds like a priest prayer. "Help me guard against pride" sounds like a
struggle against arrogance. "Pride" is the positive pole of arrogance; the
negative pole is "vanity." (Even pride, in this case, is false pride, so it's
not a good thing.) Michelle is force of nature, a strong and blunt person;
according to Obama, she helps him stay grounded because she tells it like it is
and won't let him get away with anything. That's helped him keep the "dragon" of
arrogance in its cave.

I had first gotten saturnian/mercurial body type. When I studied his picture, I
began to think that that should be reversed, mercurial first, since there's more
of an oval quality to his face. I asked Michael about that, and they amended his
chart to read 51% mercurial /49% saturnian, commenting, "Mercurial shows up more
in his face, but saturnian, more in his body. He's balanced."

Every channel got him as being a mature soul except one. The one who said young
soul was one of the Yarbro channels, who said that he was sixth-level young. I
got sixth-level mature. I think that the Yarbro people are often accurate in
their overleaves of celebrities, and I'm always interested in what they have to
say. However, I think they have a bias about soul age that tends to make them
skew younger than they are, especially with celebrities; they seem to have an
assumption that if you're famous, you're probably young. Some other channels
have acknowledged that they've had a bias skewing older, a similar but opposite
problem: they tended to assume that if somebody seemed to be spiritual, they
were probably old souls. To be an accurate channel, you have to put aside all
bias, either deflating or inflating or any other distortion; you have to have no
assumptions about the subject, or at least know that you have them and put them
aside.

I have known young priests who are inspirational and wise people. I would not
have a problem thinking of him as being young, and would think no less of him
for that. However, the focus of the young soul age is success for its own sake;
the focus of the mature soul age is relationships. Even though he got a degree
from Harvard Law School, he never made a lot of money. Michelle, whom I got as
being sixth-level young, made a higher salary when she worked.

The levels that he's been channeled as mature are fourth, fifth, sixth and
seventh. with a lot of consensus around sixth. I probably wouldn't go with
fourth, because it has a pure relationship orientation; I don't see that with
him. I wouldn't go with fifth, either, because it's eccentric, doing things in
an odd, expansive, sage-like way. I would go with either sixth or seventh. Seven
is the mastery level; it's about teaching and he's clearly doing that.
Sixth-level mature stereotypically is difficult and karmic. However, I know a
lot of sixth level mature souls, and not all of them are having rough, "through
the wringer" kind of lives. A lot of them are, but not all of them, which
illustrates the limitations of generalizations with this material. Sixth levels
of any soul age tend to take a lot of lifetimes to complete, because they're
about tying up things with other people from the whole soul age that had been
left undone. It matters whether you're at the early stage, the middle, or the
end, because if you're just getting started or you're finishing it up, it may
not be as karmic. It also matters how much leftover karma that the soul has at
this point; every soul is going to have a different story to tell in that
regard. If one has already cleaned up a lot of it, there isn't as much karma to
deal with.

I asked Michael, and got that he is early in the sixth level--the second
lifetime there. It doesn't look like Obama has had terrible hardship in his life
to overcome so far, but if he is interested in paying off a lot of karma in a
positive way, being President in this turbulent time is probably a great way for
him to do that. Enduring flack, lies, etc., with grace can be part of repaying
karma.

MICHELLE OBAMA
(Chart 31)

When I channel charts, I try to guess the person's role beforehand by studying
his or her photograph. I often get something different from what I guess, and
that's been educational for me. (Studying the person's face also simply focuses
my concentration, making it easier for Michael to tune in deeply to the person.)

Michelle Obama's chart is similar to Lisa Hollingworth's (Chart 23), another
scholar/honorary warrior lawyer, and also to Kathy Griffin's (Chart 20). In each
case, the strong warrior flavor against the neutral scholar quality can make it
difficult to discern which role is correct if you don't know the person well.
With both Obama and Griffin, I had originally assumed that they are warriors.
Obama is particularly earthy and no-nonsense, with a penetrating, cool look in
her eyes. She is also very intelligent; any role can be intelligent, but
stereotypical intelligence, meaning the ability to retain and manipulate facts,
is particularly common among scholars, who often spend many lifetimes
assimilating knowledge and exercising their intellect.

Some other channels got that Obama is a warrior. I can certainly understand
that, and it's up to you to decide, but what I got was scholar, warrior essence
twin and then *double* warrior casting: third in her cadence that is also third
in its greater cadence. Her greater cadence is fourth in its string of greater
cadences; four is the scholar number, a weak influence, but it reinforces her
scholar essence. So here we see a color scheme of scholar, warrior, warrior,
warrior, scholar. It's a limited, two-color scheme. Whenever you put scholar and
warrior energy together, the warrior energy is what you're going to notice. It's
like a color scheme of white and red--your eye will go to the red because red is
dominant. Furthermore, she has, by my reckoning, no scholar overleaves, but two
more warrior influences: being a young soul, which is the third (warrior) soul
age, and, significantly, the warrior-position attitude of cynic.

Cynic is the most noticeable trait on Obama's chart. Cynic attitude is even more
challenging than the goal of discrimination; as a rule, it's the most difficult
overleaf. Some people do it subtly, and you don't notice it that much; they've
learned how to run that energy without it sticking out like a sore thumb, but
it's a hard one to do well, and a warrior (or honorary warrior) cynic is a cynic
in overdrive, since those traits reinforce each other.

The positive pole of cynic is "contradiction"--that's not the negative pole!
It's sort of like warrior "persuasion." The negative pole is "denigration."
Cynic has an acidic quality that cuts through the crap and gets to the heart of
things. It's a tire-kicker attitude, a way of looking at the world that is
fierce and doesn't take anything on face value.

I don't think that Barack Obama would reveal so much today, but in an early
interview, someone asked about Michelle, and he said, "She's the love of my
life, but she can be mean sometimes." She came under a lot of fire early on for
not being soft and fuzzy, so she's tried to change the way she comes across in
public. However, she is strongly no-nonsense. I think of the warrior motto as,
"Don't mess with me!" She created an organic garden on the White House grounds;
a reporter asked her if Barack and their daughters would be working in it. She
said something like, "They're going to be out here shoveling whether they like
it or not!"

Caution mode is the only chart element I see that tempers these qualities.

Arrogance is another strong overleaf.

I got her soul age as sixth-level young. Being young is about pulling yourself
up by your bootstraps, and although sixth level resonates with priest rather
than warrior, it does work you hard. Either way, she clearly has a lot of
capacity for work.

To validate whether Obama is a scholar with a large amount of warrior influence,
or a warrior in essence, your basic decision would be whether she's
predominantly assimilative or active. Is her basic nature to digest things or to
do? Is she a big reader, collecting a lot of books, or is being externally
productive more central to who she is? I don't know enough about her to answer
those questions.

However, almost everyone agrees that Barack Obama is a priest, and the
priest/scholar coupling is very common. The priest/warrior coupling is not
unheard of, either--it's an "opposites attract" thing, exciting because priests
are up in the higher realms, and warriors are highly physical--they excite each
other from that balancing quality. However, priests most often mate with either
servers or scholars, so that could be a validation that Obama is a scholar.

ANN
(Chart 32)

This chart was channeled by Terri Benning. Terry got you, Annie, as being in the
same entity as me, and I definitely feel that from looking at your photo, like
you're an old pal. I also thought I saw some priest energy coming through it,
so, with Annie's permission, I channeled the first three lines of the chart.
This is not on your copy in the PDF because I did it after I put this packet
together. My channeling agreed that Annie is a sage; however, I got warrior
casting rather than warrior essence twin, and a discarnate priest essence twin.

Parenthetically, in the comment box on Annie's chart is some information Terri
got: raw number, block, row, and position. I don't know enough about that system
to teach or comment on it. However, we did ask JP Van Hulle, who first channeled
the system, and she said that it is different from the "Michael Math" casting
numbers I use that were first presented in Yarbro's book, "More Messages from
Michael." So we can let go of trying to reconcile these two systems. Apparently,
casting happens before we start the grand cycle and applies throughout it,
whereas block, row, etc., are established just before our entity (spiritual
family) starts incarnating on the physical plane, to determine our more specific
work here, how the entity is going to divide up its tasks.

Let's examine, Annie, whether you have some priest bleedthrough in addition to
being a sage with warrior influence. In addition to your sagely need for
insight, do you "wither on the vine" if you don't keep your inspirational fires
lit?

ANNIE: Yes.

SHEPHERD: I have pure sage energy (sage, sage essence twin, and sage primary
casting, plus some sage overleaves). I just need to understand why things are
the way they are--it's intellectual (sage is on the same axis as the
intellectual and higher intellectual centers). I don't really respond very well
to people trying to inspire me. I haven't, for example, responded to Barack
Obama's inspiration about change; I just want insight; I'm attracted to ideas,
so I'm interested in Obama's policies and what he plans to do. However, when
someone has priest energy, she needs a higher good connection going all the
time. For you, it's not as dominant as your sage energy, since you *are* a sage,
but it's there if you have priest bleedthrough.

Your overleaves of growth, pragmatist, passion, and intellectual centering are
pretty harmonious; there's nothing really abrading there. Self-deprecation is a
fear of being inadequate, so your obstacle to conveying insight and inspiration
to others is a fear that it's not quite good enough. Is that what you most
wrestle with?

ANNIE: Yes, that's it.

SHEPHERD: Your secondary obstacle of impatience is being wound up, pushing
rather than being in the present moment. With growth and priest bleedthrough,
that could manifest as wanting to grow more and faster, and to understand more
than you already do, wanting to propel yourself ahead into the future.

ANNIE: Yes, I do have to fight with myself to stay in the moment and present. My
triple Gemini energy probably also contributes to this.

SHEPHERD: It all fits together.

The casting numbers I got for you, in terms of Michael math, are three, two and
seven; three is warrior, two is artisan, and seven is king. The seven, being
last, is not that important, but it reinforces the three of the warrior.
Together, they help you to be more practical and down to earth, good at getting
things done. Even with that inspirational priest energy, you're probably not
going to get lost in the stars and dreamy-eyed. Your secondary artisan casting
is complementary to sage, not a significantly new influence. Both sage role and
artisan casting are cardinal; so is warrior casting, priest bleedthrough,
growth, and passion, so you're pretty cardinal.

ANNIE: How do our charts change through our lives?

SHEPHERD: Nothing usually changes except what soul age you manifest if it's not
your true soul age. Also, you can, if you work hard, eliminate or change your
chief obstacle. Otherwise, unless a new soul walks in, which is very rare, your
chart is static.

ANNIE: What is my best way to learn?

SHEPHERD: Since you're a sage/priest and your goal of growth is blocked by your
chief obstacle of self-deprecation, I recommend lightening up, not taking it all
too seriously or trying too hard. Sages need to laugh and play, so say to your
self-deprecation, "I don't care if I *am* inadequate--I'm going to have fun
anyway!" Embracing our fears helps neutralize them.

AIDAN QUINN (Chart
33)

Aidan Quinn is in the midrange of actors, not extremely famous but in a lot of
films and television shows, so you may know of him. He was in "Desperately
Seeking Susan." He's an artisan with double artisan casting, so nobody's going
to mistake him for anything but an "adorable" artisan. However, there's an
interesting play in his chart: discarnate king essence twin, tertiary king
casting, higher male energy, dominance (which is the king goal), aggression (the
king mode), and moving center. He isn't generally cast as the flakey sort of
artisan, even though he could probably pull that off. He has king nobility mixed
in with his artisan energy.

Although artisan and king energies are very different and hard to blend, he
seems to do it well, although, of course, I don't know what he's like in his
personal life. In the positive poles, there is a mastery of creativity; in the
negative poles, there could be chaotic tyranny.

RICHARD RODGERS
(Chart 34)

Richard Rodgers, of the songwriting teams Rodgers and Hammerstein and Rodgers
and Hart, was one of our musical theater greats. He was an artisan/honorary sage
with secondary artisan casting and three artisan overleaves, so he was very
strong on the expression axis, especially the ordinal side. As mentioned, he was
an endless fount of great, enduring melodies.

He could be a problematic person; third-level mature is probably second in
difficulty only to sixth-level mature. Skeptic and caution puts the brakes on;
the negative pole of the skeptic attitude is "suspicion," and he was known for
sometimes being suspicious. The chief obstacle of impatience has a negative pole
of "intolerance" and can be testy; in him, this was exacerbated by his sometimes
drinking too much.

Artisans approach creativity more spontaneously than, say, scholars. Shakespeare
and Beethoven were scholars, so obviously, scholars can be hugely creative, but
they tend to approach their work more methodically. Although Rodgers was
intellectually centered, intellectual precision was not his forte. He could
write serviceable lyrics, but his greatest songs had lyrics by sage Lorenz Hart
and scholar Oscar Hammerstein.

Hammerstein's protégé Stephen Sondheim (Chart 38) is a brilliant scholar who
crafts songs, both music and lyrics, very deliberately and intellectually, not
nearly as spontaneously.

KARL ROVE (Chart
35)

I mentioned that I was asked to do Karl Rove's chart in conjunction with
Machiavelli's, whom I got as a king/artisan. I got Rove as a scholar/king with
double warrior casting in a king entity, so he has strong solidity; you could
say that he's an honorary member of the action axis. Impatience also gives a
king's hard edge, and power mode can come on strong. However, his idealist
attitude is a moderating influence.

Rove superficially resembles Rush Limbaugh, and they have similar politics, but
their different attitudes show up sharply in their personalities: cynic Limbaugh
comes across more harshly, whereas idealist Rove comes across more softly,
despite his ruthless strategies.

I channeled Rove as being second-level young as opposed to seventh young for
both Limbaugh and Machiavelli. The second level of any soul age is a balancing
act: half in and half out. So Rove is halfway into the young soul thrust of
trying to succeed, and still half in the baby soul desire to further the values
of the society he was born into. As he evolves, he moves slowly but inexorably
more toward the more-independent young soul focus.

SUSAN(Chart 36)

I got you, Susan, as a sage, with a discarnate priest essence twin, which are
both cardinal qualities, along with king casting, which is ordinal, and then
double-server casting after that, which is cardinal. The casting numbers more or
less cancel each other out in their influence, but the overleaves are cardinal,
as well: dominance is the king goal, and the chief obstacle of impatience is
also in the king position and adds an edge to your chart; along with power mode,
this is quite a cardinal chart. Your main body type of saturnian also adds a bit
to your cardinality. This chart suggests that you are experienced by others as
quite a powerhouse of a person.

You had wondered if maybe you actually have a goal of flow and are in
perseverance mode, so let's talk about the differences. The goal of flow is the
goal of not having a goal, whereas dominance propels you to leadership.

Power mode means you come on strong, even when you don't intend to. You might
sometimes be surprised that people think you came on strong because it exudes
from you without you having to do anything about it.

In perseverance, on the other hand, you have an extraordinary ability to just
stay with something, and in the negative pole, it can lead to not letting go of
things that you really ought to let go of. It focuses on doing one thing at a
time, sometimes until the bitter end in the negative pole.

SUSAN: No that's not me. It must be dominance and power.

My Michael chart has been the most useful piece of information I've received in
my whole spiritual journey. It allowed me to understand aspects of myself and
others that I really wasn't getting. Recently, I've been dealing with somebody
in observation, and I understand why it's hard to get him out of his lookout
post, to actually get him involved, because he's much more comfortable up there
surveying what's going on. He will read a book or watch a movie and laugh like
crazy, but then, when you try to get him to look you straight in the eye and
continue laughing like crazy, he'd rather observe you than actually get into the
action. He misses so much.

SHEPHERD: In addition to observation mode (which, again, can be aloof in the
negative pole), that could be number of other things. Living overly vicariously
is a danger of many of the traits on the neutral assimilation axis and is
something that scholars especially have to watch out for. You could also be
seeing factors in his imprinting, astrology, or general psychological issues.

SUSAN: Does my chart indicate what I might end up doing in this lifetime?

SHEPHERD: Priest and sage energy are about inspiring and communicating. One of
the noteworthy qualities of this combination is that pure sage energy can
sometimes not take life seriously enough, and pure priest energy can sometimes
take life too seriously. With that combination, they balance each other out in
that regard. You have the ability as a sage to communicate intellectually; the
priest energy adds empathy for others, the ability to help in a more emotional
way, so you balance these two qualities as well. King casting suggests that you
want to master both qualities, so you're looking to improve how you communicate
with inspiration. Your double server secondary and tertiary casting after that
means that you also want what you communicate and inspire to serve the common
good (people's everyday needs). With dominance and power, you're definitely an
influential person.

SAM SHEPARD (Chart
37)

I channeled that Sam Shepard is a warrior/honorary artisan. He's not only an
actor, but a gifted playwright famous on Broadway for "True West," for example,
and also a film director, so his creativity is strongly manifested. His basic
warrior quality is focused, yet in the background there's an ability to at least
simulate juggling inputs like artisans do.

One review described him as a "rugged sex symbol." He epitomizes physical
centering, which was originally called "sexual centering." It is the natural
center for warriors, so that trait is underlined in him: he lives and reacts
more from his body; his body is forward in his life, so others notice it more.

I channeled Johnny Depp (Chart 11) as also being a warrior/honorary artisan Then
there are people who are the reverse: artisan/honorary warrior, like Clint
Eastwood (Chart 12), who plays tough guys, yet is quite the creative auteur and
has a fundamental softness in his core.
***

We didn't get to all the charts in the PDF; perhaps we'll cover some of them in
an upcoming workshop. I hope you found this useful.